org-mode/ORGWEBPAGE/Changes.org

Org-mode list of user-visible changes

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Version 6.31

Org-babel is now part of the Org distribution

Org-babel provides the ability to execute source code in many different languages within org-mode documents. The results of code execution – text, tables and graphics – can be integrated into Org-mode documents and can be automatically updated during publishing. Since Org-babel allows execution of arbitrary code, the range of tasks that can be addressed from within an Org mode file becomes very large. Examples of ways in which Org-babel might be used include

• Documenting a task that involves some programming so that it is automatically repeatable
• Creating dynamic (executable) reports that respond to changes in the underlying data (Reproducible Research)
• Exportation of code contained in an Org-mode document into regular source code files (Literate Programming)

Additionally, Org-babel provides a programming environment within Org files, in which data can be transmitted between parameterised source code blocks in different languages, as well as between source code blocks and Org-mode tables.

A simple API is defined so that users can add support for new "languages" (broadly construed). Languages currently supported are:

• asymptote
• css
• ditaa
• dot
• emacs-lisp
• gnuplot
• haskell
• ocaml
• python
• R
• ruby
• sass
• sh
• sql

Org-babel was designed and implemented Eric Schulte with continued significant help on both accounts from Dan Davison.

MobileOrg support

Richard Morelands iPhone/iPod Touch program MobileOrg can view Org files, mark entries as DONE, flag entries for later attention, and capture new entries on the road. Org-mode has now support to produce a staging area where MobileOrg can download its files, and to integrate changes done on the phone in a half automatic, half interactive way. See the new appendix B in the manual for more information.

Indented lines starting with "#+ " are treated as comments

To allow comments in plain lists without breaking the list structure, you can now have indented comment lines that start with "#+ ".

New STARTUP keyword `showeverything'

This will make even drawer contents visible upon startup. Requested by Jeff Kowalczyk.

New contributed package org-invoice.el

This package collects clocking information for billing customers.

Thanks to Peter Jones for this contribution.

Encrypting subtrees

org-crypt.el by John Wiegley and Peter Jones allows encryption of individual subtrees in Org-mode outlines. Thanks to John and Peter for this contribution.

Agenda: Support for including a link in the category string

The category (as specified by an #+CATEGORY line or CATEGORY property can contain a bracket link. While this sort-of worked in the past, it now is officially supported and should cause no problems in agenda display or update. The link can be followed by clicking on it, or with C-c C-o 0.

This was a request by Peter Westlake.

Version 6.30

Inconsistent changes

Agenda now uses f and b to move through time

Up to now, the Org-mode agenda used the cursor keys left and right to switch the agenda view forward an backward through time. However, many people found this confusing, and others wanted to be able to do cursor motion in the agenda, for example to select text. Therefore, after an extensive discussion on emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, it was decided to use the b and f keys instead, and to let the cursor keys do cursor motion again.

Agenda follow mode is now on the F key

This was necessary to free up the f key, see above.

Details

Maintenance

New command to submit a bug report

There is now a special command M-x org-submit-bug-report. This command will create a mail buffer with lots of useful details. In particular, it contains complete version information for Emacs and Org-mode. It will also (if you agree to it) contain all non-standard settings of org-mode and outline-mode related variables. Even if you do not sent your emails from within Emacs, please still use this command to generate the information and then copy it into your mail program.

The command will not generate and include a *Backtrace* buffer, please do this yourself if you have hit an error. For more information, see the feedback section of the manual.

New contributed package org-track.el

This package allows to keep up-to-date with current Org development, using only Emacs on-board means. So if you don't want or cannot use git, but still want to run the latest and hottest Org-mode, this is for you.

Thanks to Sebastian Rose for this contribution.

Agenda

Agenda now uses f and b to move through time

Up to now, the Org-mode agenda used the cursor keys left and right to switch the agenda view forward an backward through time. However, many people found this confusing, and others wanted to be able to do cursor motion in the agenda, for example to select text. Therefore, after an extensive discussion on emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, it was decided to use the b and f keys instead, and to let the cursor keys do cursor motion again.

Agenda follow mode is now on the F key

This was necessary to free up the f key, see above.

The agenda can be put into a dedicated frame

When the variable org-agenda-window-setup has the value other-frame, then the new frame created to show the agenda will now have the window marked as dedicated. As a consequence, exiting the agenda while the agenda is the only window on the frame will kill that frame.

This was a request by Henry Atting.

New mode to show some entry body text in the agenda

There is now a new agenda sub-mode called org-agenda-entry-text-mode. It is toggled with the E key. When active, all entries in the agenda will be accompanied by a few lines from the outline entry. The amount of text can be customized with the variable org-agenda-entry-text-maxlines.

This was a request by Anthony Fairchild, Manish, and others.

Improve following links from the agenda

C-c C-o in the agenda will now offer all links in the headline and text of an entry. If there is only a single link, it will be followed immediately.

Avoid some duplicate entries

There is a new variable that can be used to avoid some duplicate agenda entries: org-agenda-skip-scheduled-if-deadline-is-shown If that is set, it avoids that an entry shows up in the agenda for today for both a scheduling and a deadline entry. See the docstring of the variables for more details.

This partially addresses a request by Samuel Wales.

Mark the running clock in the agenda.

If the entry currently being clocked is present in the agenda, it will be highlighted with the face org-agenda-clocking.

This was a request by Rainer Stengele.

Export

Allow LaTeX export to use the listings package

The LaTeX listings package can now be used for formatting fontified source code in many programming languages. For more information, see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/16269 and http://orgmode.org/worg/org-faq.php#fontified_source_code_w_latex

Thanks to Eric Schulte for this patch.

Remove table rows that only contain width and alignment markers

The width and alignment in table columns can be set with a cookie like "<10>" or "<r>" or "<r10>". In order to keep Org from exporting such lines, the first column of a line should contain only "/". However, for convenience, there is now a special case: If the entire row contains only such markers, the line will automatically be discarded during export, even is the first column is not "/".

Allow Macro calls to span several lines.

Macro calls may now span several lines, to write several arguments in a cleaner way. The result of a macro call can also span several lines, by inserting the string "\n" (backslash followed by n) into the value in the macro definition.

These were requests by Stefan Vollmar.

Misc

Quick access to all links in an entry

If C-c C-o is called while the cursor is in a headline, but not directly on a link, then all links in the entry will be offered in a small menu. If there is only a single link, it will be followed without a prompt.

Visibility Cycling: Allow to show all empty lines after a headline

org-cycle-separator-lines can now be set to a negative value, to indicate that, if the number of empty lines before a visible entry is greater than the specified number, then all empty lines should be shown.

This was a request by "PT" whatever this means.

Allow language names to replace some strange major mode names

Sometimes a language uses a major mode which can't be guessed from it's name. There is now a new variable org-src-lang-modes which can be used to map language names to major modes when this is the case. This is used when editing a source-code block, or when exporting fontified source-code with htmlize.

Thanks to Eric Schulte for a patch to this effect.

iswitchb support for many completion prompts

This is enabled using org-completion-use-iswitchb, and follows the same model of usage as for ido users.

Thanks to John Wiegley for a patch to this effect.

New commands to set the effort property of an entry

There is now a special command, C-c C-x e to set the Effort property of an entry. From the agenda you can even use e. If you have set up allowed values for the Effort property, then using a prefix argument will directly select the nth allowed value. For example, in the agenda, 5 e will select the 5th allowed value.

This was a request by Michael Gilbert

Edit src works now better with killing buffer

Thanks to Dan Davison for a patch to this effect

Version 6.29

Structure editing and cycling

New minor mode org-indent-mode

This mode implements outline indentation similar to clean view, but in a dynamic and virtual way, at display time. I have wanted this functionality for years and tried several implementations, all unworkable. Emacs 23 has finally made it possible. So this solution is for Emacs 23 only, and I am not sure yet how stable it really is. Time will tell.

Currently I do not recommend to turn it on globally using the variable org-startup-indented. But you can turn it on for a particular buffer using

  #+STARTUP: indent

Turning on this minor mode automatically turns on org-hide-leading-stars, and it turns off org-adapt-indentation.

Skip CHILDREN state if there are no children

When a subtree does not have any children, visibility cycling now skips the CHILDREN state. You can customize this behavior with the variable org-cycle-skip-children-state-if-no-children.

Nodes without keyword can now be counted for statistics

See the variable org-provide-todo-statistics for details. It can be the symbol all-headings, or a list of TODO states to consider.

This was requested by David A. Gershman.

New function org-list-make-subtree

This function converts the plain list at point into a subtree, preserving the list structure. The key for this command is C-c C-*. Thanks to Ilya Shlyakhter for this suggestion.

Headlines can be fontified to the right window border

Use the variable org-fontify-whole-heading-line to turn this on. Then headline fontification will include the final newline. If your setup for headline faces includes a background different from the default background, this setup creates a visual line across the window.

Inline tasks have become better citizens

The new key C-c C-x t inserts an inline task including an END line. Inline tasks play along with (i,e, are ignored by) link creation and footnotes. Inline tasks with an END line can be refiled and archived. During the refile/archive operation, the tasks become normal tasks and the END line disappears.

These improvements reflect reports and requests by Peter Westlake and Matt Lundin.

Archive subtree and move to next visible task

When archiving a task, the cursor now ends up on the next headline, so the repeated application of the archiving command will archive successive tasks.

Thanks to Bernt Hansen for a patch to this effect.

Renumbering the fn:N-like footnotes

The new footnote action r will renumber simple fn:N footnotes in the current document. The action S will first do the renumbering and then sort the footnotes (the s action).

This was a request by Andreas Röhler.

Automatic sorting and renumbering

Customize the new variable org-footnote-auto-adjust or use the #+STARTUP option fnadjust to get automatic renumbering and sorting of footnotes after each insertion/deletion.

This was a request by Andreas Röhler.

Improvements to plain-list-cycling with TAB.

TAB now by default cycles visibility in plain lists if the cursor is at a plain list item. This corresponds to the new default value t of org-cycle-include-plain-lists. If you want to treat plain list items as part of the outline hierarchy during cycling of outline headings (this is what a t value used to mean), set this variable to integrate.

Force bullet type changes during plain list demotion

We now have a mechanism to force a particular bullet type when demoting a plain list item. See the variable org-list-demote-modify-bullet for details.

This was a request by Rainer Stengele.

Tables

Relative row references may now cross hlines

A relative row reference like @-1 in a table may now reach across a horizontal separator line. I hope this will not break any important tables out there, but I think it is the right thing to do.

The sole original reason for not allowing such crossing was to implement running averages of one column in the next. This can now be done using field formulas near the beginning and end of the column, and a column formula for the central part.

See the variable org-table-relative-ref-may-cross-hline for more details.

Cut or copy single fields

C-c C-x C-w and C-c C-x M-w now act on single table fields if there is no active region defined.

Links

Find agenda files linking to the current location

The new command org-occur-link-in-agenda-files creates a link like org=store-link would, and then searches all agenda files for this link. So for example, you could be in a GNUS message, trying to find tasks that have links to this message.

Include stored links into link completion

When inserting a link with C-c C-l, TAB completion will now not only access link prefixes, but also the stored links.

Agenda

Bulk commands: Add Schedule and Deadline processing

Agenda bulk commands on marked entries now can also set the scheduling date or a deadline. Normally, all entries will be set to the specified date. However, when writing the change as "++5d" or "++2w", then each time stamp will independently be shifted by that amount.

Tags-todo searches: No longer force to list sublevels

For historic reasons, org-tags-match-list-sublevels was forced to t in tags-todo agenda searches. Now we no longer do this and accept the user setting of this variable.

Thanks to Patrick Bahr for bringing this up.

Export

Use file-source.org format instead of file.org-source

When publishing the source Org file to the source directory (i.e. if the publishing directory is the same as the source directory), then the file name will now look like file-source.org and file-source.org.html. Note that if you do use this kind of setup, you probably want to specify

:exclude "-source\.org"

in your publishing project, to avoid that a new generation of -source files is created each time you publish the project.

LaTeX export: Skip title command when there is no title

Using #+TITLE: without a value makes the LaTeX export ignore the value of org-export-latex-title-command.

New option org-export-html-footnote-format

This defines the format for footnote references. This string must contain %s which will be replaced by the footnote label.

More export options for source code examples

Allow whitespace in code references. Allow the -r switch to remove the references in the source code even when the lines are not numbered: the labels can be explicit enough. Note that -r -k is the same as no switch at all.

Thanks to Ulf Stegemann for bring this up.

LaTeX export: Allow more environment for low-level headings

The user can now define a non-standard environment or macro to handle export of low-level headings to LaTeX.

For details, see the variable org-export-latex-low-levels.

LaTeX export: Add postscript file extensions for images

Some people process LaTeX files not directly to pdf, but go through dvi and then to ps or pdf. In that case, allowed images are ps and eps files, not pdf and jpg.

This commit adds the two extensions, so that export using that alternative path can be supported better. However, it is up to the user to make sure that the images are actually compatible with the backend.

HTML export: Show UP and HOME links

org-export-html-link-up and org-export-html-link-home are now also inserted into normal HTML export, above the page title.

General mechanism for local variable settings

Many different people want to set many different variables in a buffer-local way for export. This cannot be done with file variables, because the Org buffer is not current while the exporter is running.

Lots of variables can be set with the #+OPTIONS lines, but finding abbreviations goes only so far.

Therefore we have now a general mechanism that can be used to bind variables during export operations.

A line like:

  #+BIND: variable value

will bind the variable to value. For example, the line

  #+OPTIONS: toc:nil

can now equivalently be written as

  #+BIND: org-export-with-toc nil

Clean out publishing timestamp directory

When changing the publishing setup, old timestamp files can be left behind. Forcing publishing of all projects with C-u C-c C-e E will remove all existing timestamp files.

Miscellaneous

Calendar for reading a date forced into current frame.

Separate-frame setup for calendar had caused problems in AquaEmacs.

Set timers for headlines

You can now set a timer related to any headline, like an alarm clock. Three new commands have been defined:

org-timer-set-timer

bound to C-c C-x ; in Org buffers and to ; in Org agenda buffers. This function sets a timer for the headline the cursor is currently it. Up to three timers can be used at any time.

org-timer-show-remaining-time

Show the remaining time for the last timer set.

org-timer-cancel-timers

Cancel all timers.

This functionality was requested by Samuel Wales and emulates that of tea-time.el – see the emacswiki doc at

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/tea-time

Clock reports may include a time stamp

Using :timetamp t as an option in a clock report now allows insertion of the timestamp for the clocked entry. Timestamps are searched for in this order: SCHEDULING, TIMESTAMP, DEADLINE and TIMESTAMP_IA.

New option org-id-uuid-program

On some systems, uuidgen is named uuid.

Clock notification handler made configurable

See the variable org-show-notification-handler.

New option org-tags-sort-function.

This allows tags to be sorted by string<, string>, or a custom function.

Thanks to James TD Smith for a patch to this effect.

Improvements for org-feed.el

But fixes, and allowing to choose between wget and curl.

Thanks to Christopher League for a patch to this effect.

Version 6.28

Agenda changes

Refiling now works from the agenda

The command C-c C-w can be executed to refile an entry shown in the agenda. After the command, the entry will no longer be shown in the agenda. It it is still in an agenda file, refresh the agenda to bring it up from it's new context.

Bulk action

You can now use the m key to mark entries in the agenda. u will unmark the etry at point, and U will unmark everything. When one or more entries have been selected, the B key will execute an action on all selected entries. I believe this bulk action makes mainly sense for the commands that require answering interactive prompts. So far the supported actions are

• Refile all selected entries to a single destination
• Archive all selected entries
• Set the TODO state of all selected entries, bypassing any blocking or note-taking.
• Add or remove a tag to/from all selected entries

We can add more actions, if you convince me they make sense.

Modified keys

To make room for the new Bulk action commands, some keys in the agenda buffer had to move:

There is a new command bound to the v key, it dispatches various view mode changes. Month and year view are now only available as v m and v y, respectively. Turning on inclusion of archive trees and files (unsed to be on v) is now on v a and v A.

Improvements related to #+begin blocks

Indented blocks

#+begin_ ... +#end_... blocks may now be indented along with the structure of your document. So the #+ lines no longer need to start in column 0, these lines can be, along with the block contents, indented arbitrarily. Org supports this during editing with "C-c '", and now finally treats them consistently during export across all backends. This makes these blocks work much better with plain list structure editing, and it also looks better if you like to indent text under outline headings. For example:

  *** This is some headline
      #+begin_example
  ,    here we have an example
      #+end_example
  ,
  ,    - a plain list
  ,      - a sublist item
  ,        - a second sublist item

            #+begin_center
  ,           centering within the plain list item
            #+end_center

        #+begin_example
  ,       This example does terminate the sublist,
  ,       the indentation of the #+begin line counts.
        #+end_example

  ,    - but the top level plain lists continues here

From now on, the indentation of such a block decides whether it is part of a plain list item or if it is actually terminating the list. This was so far inconsistent between editing behavior and export, now it is consistent.

The content of the block, i.e. the text between the #+ lines gets an extra indentation of two space characters, which I find visually pleasing. You can change the amount of extra indentation using the variable org-src-content-indentation.

This was a pretty complex change, achieved in many small steps over the last couple of weeks. It cleans up one of the more annoying inconsistencies in Org. I hope it will work, but I am sure you will let me know if not.

Indented tables

Also tables can be fully indented now. What is new here is that the #+TBLFM line, and also things like #+caption, #+label, #+attr_... etc can be indented along with the table. Again, this makes the look of the document better and allows for proper plain list structure editing.

Protected blocks

Some #+begin_ ... +#end_... blocks contain text that should not be processed like normal Org-mode text. example and src block fall into this class, and so do ditaa blocks, for example. The content in such blocks is now properly fontified in a single face (called org-block). This was a frequently requested feature. The list of blocks that should be protected from normal Org-mode fontification is defined in the variable org-protecting-blocks. Modules defining new blocks should add to this variable when needed. org-exp-blocks.el does this already.

Hide and show the contents of blocks

Blocks can now be folded and unfolded with TAB. If you want to have all blocks folded on startup, customize org-hide-block-startup or use the #+STARTUP options hideblocks or showblocks to overrule this variable on a per-file basis.

Thanks to Eric Schulte for a patch to this effect.

Moved Eric Schulte's org-exp-blocks.el into the core

This seems to be getting a lot of use now, so it is now part of the core and loaded automatically. This package can now also be used to define new blocks. Customize the variable org-export-blocks or use the function org-export-blocks-add-block.

New and updated contributed modules

org-export-generic.el is now a contributed package.

This new module allows users to export an Org page to any type of output by constructing the output using a list of prefixes, format specifications and suffixes for the various types of org data (headlines, paragraphs, list bullets, etc). Use the org-set-generic-type function to define your own export types and have them bound to a key (use an upper-case letter for user export definitions).

Thanks to Wes Hardaker for this contribution with a lot of potential.

New contributed modules org-mac-iCal.el by Christopher Suckling

See the documentation on Worg.

org-jira.el: New file, by Jonathan Arkell

Links to Jira tickets.

org-R.el: Updated.

org-R.el has been updated, thanks to Dan Davison for this.

[ TABLE-OF-CONTENTS] is now also used for LaTeX export

This cookie will mark the location of the \tableofcontents macro. Triggered by a report by Yuva.

Changes to the clocking system

New option `org-clock-out-switch-to-state'.

Clocking out can now switch the task to a particular state.

This was a request by Manish.

More control about what time is shown in mode line while clocking

• If you have an Effort property defined, its value is also shown in the mode line, and you can configure org-clock-sound to get an alert when your planned time for a particular item is over.
• When an entry has been clocked earlier, the time shown in the mode line while the item is being clocked is now the sum of all previous, and the current clock.
• The exception to the previous rule are repeating entries: There the clock time will only be clocking instances recorded since the last time the entry when through a repeat event. The time of that event is now recorded in the LAST_REPEAT property
• You can use the property CLOCK_MODELINE_TOTAL to get control over what times are displayed in the mode line, see the manual for more information.
• The new command C-c C-x C-e can be used to change the Effort estimate and therefore to change the moment when the clock sound will go off.
• The clock string in the modeline now has a special font, org-mode-line-clock. This was a proposal by Samuel Wales.
• Clicking on the mode line display of the clock now offers a menu with important clock functions like clocking out, or switching the clock to a different task.

Thanks to Konstantin Antipin for part of the implementation, and thanks to Bernt Hansen for helping to iron out the issues related to repeated tasks.

Miscellaneous changes

Allow to specify the alignment in table columns by hand

Similar to the <20> cookies that allow to specify a maximum width for a table column, you can now also specify the alignment in order to overrule the automatic alignment choice based on the dominance of number or non-number fields in a column. The corresponding cookies are <l> and <r> for left and right side alignment, respectively. These can be combined with maximum width specification like this: <r15>.

This was a proposal by Michael Brand.

Stop logging and blocking when selecting a TODO state

Sometimes you want to quickly select or change a TODO state of an item, without being bothered by your setup for blocking state changes and logging entries. So in this case, you don't want the change be seen as a true state change.

You can now set the variable org-treat-S-cursor-todo-selection-as-state-change to nil. Then, when you use S-left and S-right to quickly flip through states, blocking and logging will be temporarily disabled.

Export BBDB anniversaries to iCalendar

See the variable `org-icalendar-include-bbdb-anniversaries'.

This was a request by Richard Riley, thanks to Thomas Baumann for the prompt implementation.

Macro definitions can be collected in an #+SETUPFILE

If you want to use many macros in different files, collect the #+macro lines into a file and link to them with

#+SETUPFILE: path/to-file

Subtree cloning now also shifts inactive dates

When using the command org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift, time stamps will be shifted for each clone. So far, this applied only to active timestamps, but now it does apply to inactive ones as well.

HTML table export: Assign alternating classes to rows

The new variable org-export-table-row-tags can now be set up in a way so that different table lines get special CSS classes assigned. This can be used for example to choose different background colors for odd and even lines, respectively. The docstring of the variable contains this example:

  (setq org-export-table-row-tags
        (cons '(if head
               "<tr>"
             (if (= (mod nline 2) 1)
                 "<tr class=\"tr-odd\">"
               "<tr class=\"tr-even\">"))
          "</tr>"))

It makes use of the local variables head and nline which are used to check whether the current line is a header line, and whether it is an odd or an even line. Since this is fully programmable, you can do other things as well.

This was a request by Xin Shi.

Remember: target headline may be a function

When setting up remember templates, the target headline may now be a function, similarly to what is allowed for the target file. The functions needs to return the headline that should be used.

Remove flyspell overlays in places where they are not wanted

We now keep flyspell from highlighting non-words in links.

Update targets in the Makefile

Some new targets in the default Makefile make it easier to update through git to the latest version: update and up2. Here are the definitions.

update:
	git pull
	${MAKE} clean
	${MAKE} all

up2:	update
	sudo ${MAKE} install

This was a request by Konstantin Antipin.

Version 6.27

Details

Macros for export

Macro processing for export has been enhanced:

• You can use arguments in a macro, for example

#+macro hello Greet the $1: Hello $1

which would turn {{{hello(world)}}} into Greet the world: Hello world

• The macro value can be an emacs-lisp for to be evaluated at the time of export:

#+macro: datetime (eval (format-time-string "$1"))

• More built-in default macros:

  date(FORMAT_TIME_STRING)

  Time/Date of export

  time(FORMAT_TIME_STRING)

  Same as date

  modification-time(FORMAT_TIME_STRING)

  Last modification of file

  input-file

  Name of the input file

  The new built-in macros have been requested by Daniel Clemente.

Link completion for files and bbdb names

Org now has a general mechanism how modules can provide enhanced support (for example through completion) when adding a link. For example, when inserting a link with C-c C-l, you can now type file: followed by RET to get completion support for inserting a file. After entering bbdb: and RET, a completion interface will allow to complete names in the BBDB database. These are the only ones implemented right now, but modules that add a link type xyz: can simple define org-xyz-complete-link that should return the full link with prefix after aiding the used to create the link. For example, if you have http links that you have to insert very often, you could define a function org-http-complete-link to help selecting the most common ones.

Source file publishing

It is now easy to publish the Org sources along with, for example, HTML files. In your publishing project, replace

:publishing-function org-publish-org-to-html

with

 :publishing-function (org-publish-org-to-html org-publish-org-to-org)
 :plain-source t
 :htmlized-source t

to get both the plain org file and an htmlized version that looks like your editing buffer published along with the HTML exported version.

Push exported stuff to kill ring

All exporters now push the produced material onto the kill-ring in Emacs, and also to the external clipboard and the primary selection to make it easy to paste this under many circumstances.

Tables in LaTeX without centering

Set the variable `org-export-latex-tables-centered' to nil if you prefer tables not to be horizontally centered. Note that longtable tables are always centered.

LaTeX export: TODO markup configurable

The markup for TODO keywords in LaTeX export is now configurable using the variable org-export-latex-todo-keyword-markup.

ASCII export to buffer

ASCII export has now the same command variations as the other export backends, for example exporting to a temporary buffer instead of a file.

The was a request by Samuel Wales.

Accessibility improvements for HTTP tables

When exporting tables to HTML, Org now adds scope attributes to all header fields, in order to support screen readers. Setting the variable org-export-html-table-use-header-tags-for-first-column will request using <th> instead of <td> also in the entire first column, so that also row information can be scoped. This was triggered by a request by Jan Buchal, and as usually Sebastian Rose came up with the right implementation.

Timezone information in iCalendar files

The timezone information in iCalendar files is now written in the correct format, and can be set in the variable org-ical-timezone. This variable is initialized from the TZ environment variable.

New contributed package org-special-blocks.el

The package turns any "undefined" #+begin_... blocks into LaTeX environments for LaTeX export, and into <div> tags for HTML export.

Thanks to Chris Gray for this contribution.

More flexibility about placing logging notes.

Logging into a drawer can now also be set for individual subtrees using the LOG_INTO_DRAWER property.

Requested by Daniel J. Sinder

New reload key

Reloading Org has moved to a new key, C-c C-x !, and is now also available in the agenda.

Start Agenda with log mode active

Set the new option org-agenda-start-with-log-mode to have log mode turned on from the start. Or set this option for specific custom commands.

Thanks to Benjamin Andresen for a patch to this effect.

Agenda speed optimizations

Depending on circumstances, construction the agenda has become a lot faster.

Triggered by Eric S Fraga's reports about using Org on a slow computer like a netbook.

New face for today in agenda

The date that is today can now be highlighted in the agenda by customizing the face org-agenda-date-today.

Thanks to Dmitri Minaev for a patch to this effect.

Properties to disambiguate statistics

When an entry has both check boxes and TODO children, it is not clear what kind of statistics a cookie should show You can now use the COOKIE_DATA property to disambiguate, by giving it a value "todo" or "checkbox".

Thanks to Ulf Stegeman, who was persistent enough to push this change past my initial resistance.

Checkboxes and TODO items: recursive statistics

Setting the variable org-hierarchical-checkbox-statistics to nil will make statistics cookies count all checkboxes in the lit hierarchy below it.

Setting the variable org-hierarchical-todo-statistics to nil will do the same for TODO items.

To turn on recursive statistics only for a single subtree, add the word "recursive" to the COOKIE_DATA property. Note that you can have such a property containing both "todo" or "checkbox" for disambiguation, and the word "recursive", separated by a space character.

The change for checkboxes was a patch by Richard Klinda.

New operators for column view

Column view has new operators for computing the minimum, maximum, and mean of property values.

Thanks to Mikael Fornius for a patch to this effect.

Version 6.26

Details

custom IDs

Entries can now define a CUSTOM_ID property. This property must be a valid ID according to HTML rules, and it will be used in HTML export as the main target ID for this entry. That means, both the table of conents and other internal links will automatically point to this ID instead of the automatic ID like sec-1.1. This is useful to create humar-readable permanent links to these location in a document.

The user is responsible to make sure that custom IDs are unique within a file.

Links written like [[#my-target-name] ] can be used to target a custom ID.

When using C-c l to store a link to a headline that has a custom ID, Org will now create two links at the same time. One link will be to the custom ID. The other will be to the globaly unique ID property. When inserting the line with C-c C-l, you need to decide which one you want to use. Use the ID links for entries that are expected to move from one file to the next. Use custom ID links publishing projects, when you are sure that te entry will stay in that file. See also the variable org-link-to-org-use-id.

Remember to non-org files

If the target headline part of a remember template definition entry is top or bottom, the target file may now be a non-Org-mode file. In this case, the content of the remember buffer will be added to that file without enforcing an Org-like headline. Sorry, Russel, that this took so long.

New property to turn off todo dependencies locally

Setting the property NOBLOCKING will turn off TODO dependency checking for this entry.

Refile verify

A new function is called to verify tasks that are about to be selected as remember targets. See the new variable org-refile-target-verify-function.

New version org ditaa.jar

Thanks to Stathis Sideris.

htmlize.el is now in the contrib directory

The latest version of htmlize.el is now the in the contrib directory of Org. Thanks to Hrvoje Niksic for allowing this.

Version 6.25

Major new features

DocBook export

We now do have a fully functional DocBook exporter, contributed by Baoqiu Cui. Simple press C-c e D to export the current file to DocBook format. You can also get direct conversion to PDF if you have made the correct setup, please see the manual for details.

Kudos to Baoqiu for this fantastic addition, and my personal thanks for doing this in a such a smooth way that I did not have to do anything myself.

Protocols for external access to Emacs and Org

org-protocol.el is a new module that supersedes both org-annotation-helper.el and org-browser.el and replaces them with a more abstracted interface. org-protocol intercepts calls from emacsclient to trigger custom actions without external dependencies. Only one protocol has to be configured with your external applications or the operating system, to trigger an arbitrary number of custom actions. Just register your custom sub-protocol and handler with the new variable org-protocol-protocol-alist.

org-protocol comes the with three standard protocol handlers (in parenthesis the name of the sub-protocol):

org-protocol-remember (remember)

Trigger remember

org-protocol-store-link (store-link)

Store a link

org-protocol-open-source (open-source)

Find the local source of a remote web page.

Passing data to emacs is now as easy as calling

emacsclient org-protocol://sub-protocol://data

For more information see the online documentation

Thanks to Sebastian Rose for this really beautiful module.

Inline tasks

Inline tasks are tasks that have all the properties of normal outline nodes, including the ability to store meta data like scheduling dates, TODO state, tags and properties. But these tasks are not meant to introduce additional outline structure, at least as far as visibility cycling and export is concerned. They are useful for adding tasks in extensive pieces of text where interruption of the flow or restructuring is unwanted.

This feature is not turned on by default, you need to configure org-modules to turn it on, or simply add to you .emacs file:

(require 'org-inlinetask)

After that, tasks with level 15 (30 stars when using org-odd-levels-only) will be treated as inline tasks, and fontification will make obvious which tasks are treated in this way.

Input from RSS feeds

Org can now collect tasks from an RSS feed, a great method to get stuff from online call and note-taking services into your trusted system. You need to configure the feeds in the variable org-feed-alist. The manual contains a short description, more detailed information is available on Worg.

Full credit goes to Brad Bozarth who really paved the way for this exciting new feature.

Export

Allow modification of table attributes in HTML export

The #+ATTR_HTML line can now be used to set attributes for a table. Attributes listed in that line will replace existing attributes in org-export-html-table-tag, or will add new ones. For example

#+ATTR_HTML: border="2" rules="all" frame="all"
#+CAPTION: Finally a table with lines!
| a | b |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |

LaTeX low levels are now exported as itemize lists

LaTeX export now treats hierarchy levels 4,5, etc as itemize lists, not as description lists as before. This is more consistent with the behavior of HTML export. You can configure this behavior using the variable org-export-latex-low-levels.

Markup for centering.

Text can be exported centered with

#+BEGIN_CENTER
,Everything should be made as simple as possible, \\
,but not any simpler
#+END_CENTER

Sitemap file is now sitemap.org

Org-publish can produce a list of all files in a project. Previously the file containing this list was called "index.org", really a brain-dead default because during publication it would overwrite the "index.html" file of the website.

The default file name is now "sitemap.org"

Protect explicit target links in HTML export

If a link is [[#name] [desc]], the href produced when exporting the file will be exactly href="#name". So starting a link target with # will indicate that there will be an explicit target for this.

HTML export: Allow "- _" to explicitly terminate a list

If a list contains "- _" (three underscores) as an item, this terminates the list, ignoring this item. This is an experimental feature, it may disappear again if we find other ways to deal with literal examples right after lists.

See this mailing list thread for context.

Agenda

Changing the time of an entry from the agenda

We now have a way to change not only the date, but also the start time of an entry from the agenda. The date is normally changed with S-right/left. Now, if you add a C-u prefix, the hour will be changed. If you immediately press S-right/left again, hours will continue to be changed. A double prefix will do the same for minutes. If the entry has a time range like 14:40-16:00, then both times will change, preserving the length of the appointment.

Show saved PDF agenda view with prefix arg

When writing an agenda view to a PDF file, supplying a a prefix argument (C-u C-x C-w) will get the new file displayed immediately.

This was a request by Alan E Davis.

Filter for entries with no effort defined

During secondary agenda filtering, pressing "?" now will install a filter that selects entries which do not have an effort defined.

This new model was necessary because we needed to stop interpreting entries with no effort defines as 0 effort. This was inconsistent, because for normal agenda sorting, the treatment of these entries depends on the variable org-sort-agenda-noeffort-is-high. Now this variable is also respected during filtering.

This new feature resulted from a discussion with Matt Lundin and Bernt Hansen.

Introduce user-defined sorting operators

The new variable org-agenda-cmp-user-defined can contain a function to test how two entries should be compared during sorting. The symbols user-defined-up and user-defined-down can then be part of any sorting strategy.

This was a request by Samuel Wales.

Indentation of subitems in the agenda

When a tags/property match does match an entry and it's sublevels, the sublevels used to be indented by dots, to indicate that the matches likely result from tag inheritance. This is now no longer the default, so the subitems will not get special indentation. You can get this behavior back with

(setq org-tags-match-list-sublevels 'indented)

Stuck projects search now searches subtrees of unstuck projects

When, during a stuck-project search, a project tree is identified as not stuck, so far the search would continue after the end of the project tree. From now on, the search continues in the subtree, so that stuck subprojects can still be identified.

Miscellaneous

Citations: Use RefTeX to insert citations

RefTeX can now be used to create a citation in Org-mode buffers. Setup the buffer with

#+BIBLIOGRAPHY: bibbase style

and create citations with C-c C-x [.

Together with org-exp-bibtex.el by Taru Karttunen (available as a contributed package), this provides a great environment for including citations into HTML and LaTeX documents.

Changing time ranges as a block

When using the S-cursor keys to change the first time in a time range like

<2009-04-01 Wed 14:40-16:40>

then the end time will change along, so that the duration of the event will stay the same.

This was a request by Anupam Sengupta.

New sparse tree command

A new sparse tree command shows entries with times after a certain date. Keys are C-c / a, this command is for symmetry with C-c / b.

Cloning tasks

A new command allows to create clone copies of the current entry, with shifted dates in all stamps in the entry. This is useful to create, for example, a series of entries for a limited time period. I am using it to prepare lectures, for example.

New face for checkboxes

Checkboxes now have their own face, org-checkbox. This can be used for nice effects, for example choosing a face with a box around it:

(custom-set-faces
 (org-checkbox ((t (:background "#444444" :foreground "white"
                :box (:line-width 1 :style released-button)))))

M-a and M-e for navigation in a table field

In tables fields, the sentence commands M-a and M-e are redefined to jump to the beginning or end of the field.

This was a request by Bastien Guerry.

Backup files for remember buffers

Sometimes users report that they lost data when not immediately storing a new remember note, and then later exiting Emacs or starting a new remember process.

Now you can set the variable org-remember-backup-directory. Each remember buffer created will then get its own unique file name in that directory, and the file will be removed only if the storing of the note to an Org files was successful.

org-mac-message.el: New functions to access flagged mail

Christopher Suckling has added functionality to org-mac-message.el. In particular, you can now select a number of messages and easily get links to all of them with a single command. For details, see the online documentation.

Read-date: New hook

The new hook org-read-date-minibuffer-setup-hook is called when setting up the minibuffer for reading a date. If can be used to install new keys into the temporary keymap used there.

Version 6.24

Incompatible changes

Tag searches are now case-sensitive

From this release on, tag searches will be case sensitive. While I still think it would be nice to have them case-insensitive, this was both an inconsistency (TODO keyword searches have always been case-sensitive), and trouble for coding some efficient algorithms. So please make sure that you give the tags with correct casing when prompted for a match expression.

New key for creating tags/property sparse trees

The key to produce a sparse tree matching tags and properties is now C-c / m instead of C-c a T. This is also more consistent with the C-c a m key for the corresponding agenda view. C-c / T will still work for now, but it is no longer advertised in the documentation and may go away at any time in the future.

IDs in HTML have "ID-" prefix when generated by uuidgen

uuidgen generates IDs that often start with a number, not a latter. However, IDs and names in XHTML must start with a letter. Therefore, IDs in HTML files will now get an "ID-" prefix if they have been generated by uuidgen. This means that id links from one file to another may stop working until all files have been exported again.

In agenda, only priority cookies get the special face

So far, an entire task would get a special face when org-agenda-fontify-priorities was set. Now, the default value for this variable is the symbol cookies, which means that on the cookie is fontified. Set it to t if you want the entire task headline to be fontified.

Details

PDF export of agenda views

Agenda views can now be exported to PDF files by writing them to a file with extension ".pdf". Internally this works by first producing the postscript version and then converting that to PDF using the ghostview utility ps2pdf. Make sure that this utility is installed on your system.

The postscript version will not be removed, it will stay around.

Inline some entry text for Agenda View export

When exporting an agenda view to HTML or PDF for printing or remote access, one of the problems can be that information stored in entries below the headline is not accessible in that format.

You can now copy some of that information to the agenda view before exporting it. For this you need to set the variable org-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines to a number greater than 0.

(setq org-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines 20)

Or you can do this with the settings in a custom agenda view, for example

("A" "" agenda ""
 ((org-agenda-ndays 1)
  (org-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines 5))
 ("agenda-today.pdf"))

Improved ASCII export of links

ASCII export of links works now much better. If a link has a link and a description part which are different, then the description will remain in the text while the link part will be moved to the end of the current section, before the next heading, as a footnote-like construct.

Configure the variable org-export-ascii-links-to-notes if you prefer the links to be shown in the text. In this case, Org will make an attempt to wrap the line which may have become significantly longer by showing the link.

Thanks to Samuel Wales for pointing out the bad state of ASCII link export.

Custom agenda commands can specify a filter preset

If a custom agenda command specifies a value for org-agenda-filter-preset in its options, the initial view of the agenda will be filterd by the specified tags. Applying a filter with / will then always add to that preset filter, clearing the filter with / / will set it back to the preset. Here is an example of a custom agenda view that will display the agenda, but hide all entries with tags FLUFF or BLUFF:

("A" "" agenda ""
 ((org-agenda-filter-preset '("-FLUFF" "-BLUFF"))))

This is in response to a thread on the mailing list, started by Daniel Clemente and with great contributions by Bernt Hansen and Matt Lundin.

Exporting of citations to LaTeX and HTML, using BibTeX

Citations can now me made using BibTeX, and will be exported to LaTeX and HTML. This is implemented in a contributed package by Taru Karttunen, org-exp-bibtex.el. Kudos to Taru for this really nice addition.

Finally a way to specify keywords and description for HTML export

Use something like

#+DESCRIPTION: This page is all about ....
#+KEYWORDS: org-mode, indexing, publishing

To specify the content of the description and keywords meta tags for HTML output.

org-collector.el is now a contributed package

org-collector.el provides functions to create tables by collecting and processing properties from entries in a specific scope like the current tree or file, or even from all agenda files. General lisp expressions can be used to manipulate the property values before they are inserted into an org-mode table, for example as a dynamic block that is easy to update.

Thanks to Eric Schulte for yet another great contribution to Org.

Update of org2rem.el

org2rem.el has been updated significantly and now does a more comprehensive job of exporting Org events to remind.

Thanks to Sharad Pratap for this update.

New div around the entire page in HTMP export

A new <div id=content> is wrapped around the entire page, everything that is inside <body>.

This means that you need to update org-info.js (if you have a local copy). It will be safe todo so, because the new org-info.js still handles older pages correctly. Thanks to Sebastian Rose for making these changes so quicky.

Clustering characters for undo

When typing in Org-mode, undo will now remove up to 20 characters at a time with a single undo command. This is how things work normally in Emacs, but the special binding of characters in Org-mode made this impossible until now.

Thanks to Martin Pohlack for a patch which mimicks the behavior of the Emacs command loop for the Org version of self-insert-command. Note that this will not work in headlines and tables because typing there will do a lot of extra work.

There might be a small typing performance hit resulting from this change - please report in the mailing list if this is noticeable and annoying.

Separate settings for special C-a and C-e

The variable `org-special-ctrl-a/e' now allows separate settings for C-a and C-e. For example

(setq org-special-ctrl-a/e '(reversed . t))

Thanks to Alan Davis for this proposal.

orgstruct++-mode improvements

In addition to orgstruct-mode which allows to use some Org-mode structure commands in other major modes, there is a more invasive version of this mode: orgstruct++-mode. This mode will import all paragraph and line wrapping variables into the major mode, so that, for example, during typing the auto-fill wrapping of items will work just like in Org-mode. This change is not reversible, so turning off orgstruct++-mode will not remove these settings again. orgstruct++-mode is most useful in text modes like message-mode or magit-log-edit-mode. Furthermore, orgstruct++-mode will recognize plain list context not only in the first line of an item, but also further down, so that M-RET will correctly insert new items.

Thanks to Austin Frank for requesting some of these changes.

Promotion and demotion works for regions now

M-right and M-left now do demote and promote all headlines in an active region.

Match syntax for tags/properties is now described in a single place

The manual chapters about tags and about properties now only refer to the section about agenda views, where the general syntax of tag/property matches is described.

Macro replacement

A string like {{{ title }}} will be replaced by the title of the document, {{{ email }}} by the email setting of the author and similarly for other export settings given in #+... lines. In addition to that, you can define an arbitrary number of macros, for example:

#+MACRO: myaddress 41 Onestreet, 12345 New York, NY
...
,my address is {{{myaddress}}}, see you there.

Macro replacement is the very first thing that happens during export, and macros will be replaced even in source code and other protected regions.

New reload command, with keyboard access

There is now a special command to reload all Org Lisp files, so that you can stay in your Emacs session while pulling and compiling changes to Org. The command to reload the compiled files (if available) is C-c C-x r. If no compiled files are found, uncompiled ones will be loaded. If you want to force loading of uncompiled code (great for producing backtraces), use a prefix arg: C-u C-c C-x r. Both commands are available in the menu as well.

This new command was inspired by one written earlier by Bernt Hansen.

Faces for priority cookies can now be set freely

The new variable org-priority-faces can be used to set faces for each priority.

New key for creating tags/property sparse trees

The key to produce a sparse tree matching tags and properties is now C-c / m instead of C-c a T. This is more consistent with the C-c a m key for the corresponding agenda view. C-c / T will still work for now, but it is no longer advertised in the documentation and may go away at any time in the future.

IDs in HTML have "ID-" prefix when generated by uuidgen

uuidgen generates IDs that often start with a number, not a letter. However, IDs and names in XHTML must start with a letter. Therefore, IDs in HTML files will now get an "ID-" prefix if they have been generated by uuidgen. This means that id links from one file to another may stop working until all files have been exported again, so that both links and targets have the new prefix.

In agenda, only priority cookies get the special face

So far, an entire task would get a special face when org-agenda-fontify-priorities was set. Now, the default value for this variable is the symbol cookies, which means that on the cookie is fontified. Set it to t if you want the entire task headline to be fontified.

Turning off time-of-day search in headline

Some people like to put a creation time stamp into a headline and then get confused if the time-of-day found in there shows up as the time-of-day of the deadline/scheduling entry for this headline. The reason for this is that Org searches the headline for a free-format time when trying to sort the entry into the agenda, and that search accidentally finds the time in the creation time stamp or something else that happens to look like a time. If this is more painful than useful for you, configure the new variable org-agenda-search-headline-for-time.

Version 6.23

Overview

• Capture state change notes into a drawer
• Clock lines are now captured into the LOGBOOK drawer as well
• Added org-R.el to contrib directory
• Allow individual formatting of each TODO keyword in HTML export
• New hooks for add-ons to tap into context-sensitive commands
• Publishing files irrespective of extension
• New variable index in the manual
• The ORDERED property also influences checkboxes
• The ORDERED property can be tracked with a tag
• You may now specify line breaks in the fast tags interface
• When a TODO is blocked by checkboxes, keep it visible in agenda
• LaTeX can import Org's in-buffer definitions for TITLE, EMAIL etc.

Incompatible changes

• CLOCK lines will now be captured into the LOGBOOK drawer. See below for details.

Details

Capture state change notes into a drawer

State change notes can now be captured into a drawer LOGBOOK, to keep the entry tidy. If this is what you want, you will need this configuration:

(setq org-log-into-drawer "LOGBOOK")

Thanks to Wanrong Lin for this proposal.

Clock lines are now captured into the LOGBOOK drawer as well

The CLOCK drawer will be abandoned, clock lines will now also end up in a drawer LOGBOOK. The reason for this is that it's a bit useless to have two different drawers for state change notes and clock lines. If you wish to keep the old way, use

(setq org-clock-into-drawer "CLOCK")

Added org-R.el to contrib directory

Dan Davison has contributed org-R.el which is now in the contrib directory. Org-R performs numerical computations and generates graphics. Data can come from org tables, or from csv files; numerical output can be stored in the org buffer as org tables, and links are created to files containing graphical output. Although, behind the scenes, it uses R, you do not need to know anything about R. Common operations, such as tabulating discrete values in a column of an org table, are available "off the shelf" by specifying options on lines starting with #+R:. However, you can also provide raw R code to be evaluated. The documentation is currently the worg tutorial at http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-R/org-R.php

Thanks to Dan for this great contribution.

Allow individual formatting of TODO keyword and tags in HTML export

TODO keywords in HTML export have the CSS class todo or done. Tags have the CSS class tag. In addition to this, each keyword has now itself as class, so you could do this in your CSS file:

.todo { font-weight:bold; }
.done { font-weight:bold; }
.TODO { color:red; }
.WAITING { color:orange; }
.DONE { color:green; }

If any of your keywords causes conflicts with CSS classes used for different purposes (for example a tag "title" would cause a conflict with the class used for formatting the document title), then you can use the variables org-export-html-tag-class-prefix and org-export-html-todo-kwd-class-prefix to define prefixes for the class names for keywords, for example "kwd-".

Thanks to Wanrong Lin for this request, and to Sebastian Rose for help with the implementation.

New hooks for add-ons to tap into context-sensitive commands

Some commands in Org are context-sensitive, they will execute different functions depending on context. The most important example is of course C-c C-c, but also the M-cursor keys fall into this category.

Org has now a system of hooks that can be used by add-on packages to install their own functionality into these keys. See the docstring of org-ctrl-c-ctrl-c-hook for details. The other hooks are named like org-metaleft-hook or org-shiftmetaright-hook.

Publishing files irrespective of extension

If you set the :base-extension property for a publishing project to the symbol any, all files in the directory will be published, irrespective of extension.

Thanks to Richard Klinda for a patch to this effect.

New variable index in the manual

A new index in the manual lists all variables mentioned in the manual, about 200 variables in total.

The ORDERED property also influences checkboxes

When an entry has the ORDERED property set, checkboxes in the entry must be completed in order. This was already the case for children TODO items, now it also applies for checkboxes.

Thanks to Rainer Stengele for this proposal.

The ORDERED property can be tracked with a tag

The ORDERED property is used to flag an entry so that subtasks (both children TODO items and checkboxes) must be completed in order. This property is most easily toggled with the command C-c C-x o. A property was chosen for this functionality, because this should be a behavior local to the current task, not inherited like tags. However, properties are normally invisible. If you would like visual feedback on the state of this property, configure the variable org-track-ordered-property-with-tag. If you then use C-c C-x o to toggle the property, a tag will be toggled as well, for visual feedback.

Note that the tag itself has no meaning for the behavior of TODO items and checkboxes, and that changing the tag with the usual tag commands will not influence the property and therefore the behavior of TODO and checkbox commands.

You may now specify line breaks in the fast tags interface

Up to now, the fast tags interface tried to lump as many tags as possible into a single line, with the exception that groups would always be on a line by themselves.

Now, if you use several lines to define your tags, like

#+TAGS: aa(a) bb(b) cc(c)
#+TAGS: dd(d) ee(e) ff(f)

then there will also be a line break after the "cc" tag in the fast tag selection interface. You may also write

#+TAGS: aa(a) bb(b) cc(c) \n dd(d) ee(e) ff(f)

to achieve the same effect, and you can use \n several times in order to produce empty lines. In org-tag-alist, newlines are represented as (:newline).

Thanks to Christopher Suckling for a patch to this effect.

When a TODO is blocked by checkboxes, keep it visible in agenda

When the variable org-agenda-dim-blocked-tasks is set to invisible, tasks that are blocked will not be visible in the agenda. If the blocking is due to child TODO entries, this does make sense because the children themselves will show up in the TODO list.

However, as John Rakestraw has pointed out, if the blocking is done by checkboxes, no trace of these subtasks is left. Therefore, when the blocking is done by checkboxes, we now overrule the invisible setting and replace it with mere dimming of the task.

LaTeX can import Org's in-buffer definitions for TITLE, EMAIL etc.

If you configure org-export-latex-import-inbuffer-stuff, in-buffer definitions like #+TITLE will be made available in the LaTeX file as \orgTITLE.

This was a request by Russel Adams.

Version 6.22

Details

org-choose.el by Tom Breton is now included

Org-choose helps documenting a decision-making process by using TODO keywords for different degrees of chosenness, and by automatically keeping a set of alternatives in a consistent state.

Documentation for org-choose.el is available here.

This package inserts itself into Org using hooks, so if other people would like to do interesting stuff with TODO keywords for special purposes, looking at Tom's code might be a good way to start.

Thanks to Tom for this interesting contribution!

orgmode.org and Worg css works now better on IE

Thanks to Sebastian Rose for making these changes.

When exporting a subtree, headline levels are now relative to parent

This was reported as a bug by William Henney and is fixed now.

Inactive dates in tables can be used for sorting.

When sorting table fields or entries by date, Org first tries to find an active date, and, if none exist, uses a passive date if present.

This was a request by Hsui-Khuen Tang

The default for org-return-follows-link is back to nil

Setting it to t violates Emacs rules to some extent. The internal implementation of this has been improved, so setting it to t should now be pretty stable.

Automatic scheduling of siblings with org-depend.el

The sibling of a DONE task can now automatically be scheduled.

This was a patch by Andrew Hyatt.

New skipping conditions

The functions org-agenda-skip-entry-if and org-agenda-skip-subtree-if now accept timestamp and nottimestamp as additional conditions.

This was in response to a request by Saurabh Agrawal.

Version 6.21

Details

Changes to some default values of variables:

Here are the new default values:

(setq org-return-follows-link t)

(setq org-use-fast-todo-selection t)

(setq org-yank-adjusted-subtrees nil)

(setq org-tags-column -77)

(setq org-agenda-sorting-strategy
     '((agenda time-up priority-down category-keep)
	(todo time-up priority-down category-keep)
	(tags time-up priority-down category-keep)
	(search category-keep)))

Final cleanup for Emacs 21.1 pretest

Version 6.20

Details

Support for simple TODO dependencies

John Wiegley's code for enforcing simple TODO dependencies has been integrated into Org-mode. Thanks John!

The structure of Org files (hierarchy and lists) makes it easy to define TODO dependencies. A parent TODO task should not be marked DONE until all subtasks (defined as children tasks) are marked as DONE. And sometimes there is a logical sequence to a number of (sub)tasks, so that one task cannot be acted upon before all siblings above it are done. If you customize the variable org-enforce-todo-dependencies, Org will block entries from changing state while they have children that are not DONE. Furthermore, if an entry has a property ORDERED, each of its children will be blocked until all earlier siblings are marked DONE. Here is an example:

* TODO Blocked until (two) is done
** DONE one
** TODO two

* Parent
,  :PROPERTIES:
,    :ORDERED: t
,  :END:
** TODO a
** TODO b, needs to wait for (a)
** TODO c, needs to wait for (a) and (b)

The command C-c C-x o toggles the value of the ORDERED property.

The variable org-agenda-dim-blocked-tasks controls how blocked entries should appear in the agenda, where they can be dimmed or even made invisible.

Furthermore, you can use the variable org-enforce-todo-checkbox-dependencies to block TODO entries from switching to DONE while any checkboxes are unchecked in the entry.

Support for shift-selection in Emacs 23

Customize the variable org-support-shift-select to use S-cursor key for selecting text. Make sure that you carefully read the docstring of that variable first.

Adding and removing checkboxes from many lines

The command C-c C-x C-b normally toggles checkbox status in the current line, or in all lines in the region. With prefix argument it now either adds or removes the checkbox.

This was a requested by Daniel Clemente.

Older changes

For older Changes, see /ndwarshuis/org-mode/src/commit/db607b3e2fce2f3ca5b017dc20dc9d372469476c/ORGWEBPAGE/Changes_old.org

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